See, the thing is, the nation matured following the insanity of the civil war and decided that, hey, maybe having a bunch of folks wandering the highways and byways of America armed with pistols may not be the best thing for a civilized society. So the powers that be in most states banned the carrying of handguns, except in the case of sworn law enforcement personnel or the aforementioned rare, special use permit holders. Yep, even in Texas, toting around a pistol (except on you own land) was outlawed for more than 100 years:

In 1995, the Texas Legislature passed the first concealed handgun statute creating a system whereby Texans and nonresidents could obtain a Concealed Handgun License. The statute requires everyone who carries a handgun under the authority of their Concealed Handgun License to keep their handgun concealed so it will not be seen by the general public.

From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.

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“It is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them. Of course this notion sounds bizarre to modern ears, but it is perfectly overt in the writings of leading conservative theorists such as Burke. Democracy, for them, is not about the mechanisms of voting and office-holding. In fact conservatives hold a wide variety of opinions about such secondary formal matters. For conservatives, rather, democracy is a psychological condition. People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of its intrinsic superiority are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.”

Matthew 19:23-24
23Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

You have to credit the Japanese kleptocracy for at least being consistent.

(Reuters) - Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men. He isn't a social worker. He's a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan's nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head.

"This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day," Sasa says, as he strides past men sleeping on cardboard and clutching at their coats against the early winter cold. It's also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.

Look. Here’s the story. The story is that the national minimum wage is seven and a quarter an hour. I think most people understand that’s a starvation wage. Individuals can’t live on it. Families can’t live on it. If we raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, which to my mind doesn’t go as far as it should, that would be a raise for 30 million Americans, vast majority of them are adults. And that’s just not people making seven and a quarter an hour. It’s people making eight bucks an hour, nine dollars an hour.

And at a time when almost all new income is going to the top 1%, it is time that working people, lower income workers get a raise, and we have got to do that. Now if the Republicans refuse to go along with that, and I very much hope that they will go along with it. I hope they understand that the overwhelming majority of the American people across the political spectrum understand that we have got to raise the minimum wage, so I hope that we can get this done.

Dolphins ‘deliberately get high’ on puffer fish nerve toxins by carefully chewing and passing them around

Dolphins are thought of as one of the most intelligent species in the animal kingdom – and experts believe they have put their ingenuity to use in the pursuit of getting “high”.

In extraordinary scenes filmed for a new documentary, young dolphins were seen carefully manipulating a certain kind of puffer fish which, if provoked, releases a nerve toxin.

Though large doses of the toxin can be deadly, in small amounts it is known to produce a narcotic effect, and the dolphins appeared to have worked out how to make the fish release just the right amount.

Carefully chewing on the puffer and passing it between one another, the marine mammals then enter what seems to be a trance-like state.

I think your coverage of Benghazi is overlooking the fact that the original GOP attack was designed to muddy the waters and cover up Mitt Romney's disastrous campaign gaffe when he broke his self imposed 9/11 campaigning truce to attack the President while the attack was still going on.

Romney then forgot his own talking points when he walked right into the Benghazi trap that Obama laid for him in the Presidential debate. Obama gave Romney two opportunities to withdraw the claim that he hadn't described the attack as terrorist then mowed his head off when Romney showed himself as to proud to admit a mistake.

Romney then further compounded the disaster by arguing with Cindy Crowley as moderator while she was trying to feed him the Republican talking point he was meant to be using.

Having attacked Clinton, Rice and Obama for 'lying' over Benghazi, the Republicans need to do rather more than show that their version of events could possibly be true. To substantiate their claims they would have to show that there is convincing evidence that the administration version of events is false and that it was known to be false when it was given.

In short, the GOP are demanding that their story be granted the very sort of allowance that they insist the administration version of events be denied.